1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for booking in advance a tangible product or a service through a computer system, and more particularly to issuance of a booking certificate for certifying that a consumer has booked in advance a tangible product or a service and to legitimacy verification of the booking certificate.
2. Description of the Related Art
The method most extensively used today to allow the acquisition of a tangible product or the usage of a service, both often limited to a specific place or a specific time, independently of the place and/or time of the acquisition or the usage is the issuance of a booking certificate.
In selling a product item for which a rush of buyers is anticipated, it is a very extensively followed marketing practice to accept bookings in advance of its introduction to the market and, when it is introduced, to give priority to the consumers who booked for it in advance. To distinguish the consumers who did book from those who did not, something to certify the booking is issued. This booking certificate may be a piece of paper on which various items of information are printed or an identification number. The price of the product may be paid upon its delivery or at the time of advance booking.
In the supply of service, some of the most typical examples are advance tickets for cinemas and concerts, sold by ticket agencies ahead of scheduled presentation. In these cases, tickets, which are pieces of paper on which relevant information is printed, are the booking certificates.
Today, when computers have found their way into households and many consumers can have routine access to the Internet, various items have become available for booking through web sites opened on the Internet. Each site issues digital data, which serve as booking certificates, to the users who booked in advance an item of tangible product or service with the respective site. When the item is to be delivered to each booking consumer, he or she is required to present the data issued by the site, and if the data are found to be a legitimate booking certificate, the item will be delivered. This is the typical way of this kind of transaction.
Sales of goods and services through the Internet have given consumers the benefit of being able to book in advance the goods and services while staying at home. They also mean to the sellers of the goods and services the benefit of being able to expand their markets without having to pay the cost of maintaining physical stores, and this marketing channel is becoming indispensable especially for small venders who cannot afford to maintain large physical chains of stores.
At present, sales of goods and services through acceptance of bookings in advance via the Internet are carried out by individual venders independent of one another. Each vender manages its own site, where it generates and issues to consumers its own booking certificates. The vender, besides having to develop the system needed for issuing its booking certificates, has to bear the cost of managing the site that issues the certificates. Managing a system that handles booking certificates in the form of digital data, which are subject to the risk of being forged or copied, entails an enormous extra cost and thereby constitutes a high barrier to venders desiring to launch sales activities by accepting advance bookings via the Internet. This also imposes extra prices on the consumers who buy from these venders.